Impact of Information Barriers on People with Disabilities.
One of the barriers experienced by a significant population of people with disabilities is the information barrier that excludes them from being a part of an internet-dependent world. This information exclusion is due to the lack of accessibility in many technological developments, websites, and other digital materials, which are not designed with people with disabilities in mind.
The impact of information exclusion on people with disabilities ranges from frustration to their complete incapacity to understand or use these materials. However, potential solutions are available to eliminate this barrier, but for that and to be a part of a positive change, we first need to learn the impacts information exclusion has on people with disabilities. And to understand these impacts, we first need to consider how we perceive disability!
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What is Disability?
To establish a concept of disability, it is necessary to start from a historical perspective, where we can find that, over time, people with disabilities have been stigmatized by the predominant attitudes and behaviours of people without disabilities.
To get closer to information according to the current reality, let’s examine the different conceptual models that explain disability and functioning. This variety is expressed in a dialectic that moves from the medical model to the social model of disability.
Medical Model
The medical model considers disability as a “personal” problem directly caused by an illness, trauma, or a health condition, which requires medical care provided in the form of individual treatment by professionals. In this context, disability is often classified in terms of functions and physical traits:
- Visual (low vision, blindness, color blindness, etc.)
- Auditory (hearing impairment, deafness, etc.)
- Cognitive (traumatic brain injury, autism, learning disabilities, dyslexia, etc.)
- Motor (missing limbs, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, etc.)
- Mental health (anxiety, depression, panic attacks)
- Seizure (epilepsy)
The Charity Model
This model describes disability as a tragedy. According to it, people with disabilities should be cared for, protected, and pitied. The term ‘charity’ has an inappropriate connotation of ‘sick’, which makes people with disabilities see themselves as an object with little value and react accordingly, affecting their perception of their own condition expressed in low self-esteem.
The Rehabilitative Model
The rehabilitative model believes that if people with disabilities work hard and work with rehabilitative services to avoid their discomfort, they can overcome their disabilities. It is closely linked to the medical model and sees disability as something to be cured.
The Social Model of Disability
The social model of disability considers the phenomenon mainly as a “social” problem from the point of view of the integration of people with disabilities in society. Disability is not an attribute of the person, but a complicated set of conditions, many of which are created by the social environment.
Thus, disability is perceived as how society thinks about it, and it is society to decide on new policies, laws, physical spaces, and technologies. It is in society’s hands to strengthen discrimination against people with disabilities or eliminate it, designing a world that provides equal opportunities to all.
The social model of disability emerged in the 1970s when people with disabilities started publicly reflecting their realities.
Therefore, managing the problem requires social action, and it is the collective responsibility of society to make the necessary environmental modifications to promote the full participation of people with disabilities in all areas of social life.
The dilemma is situated, therefore, at the level of attitudes and ideology and requires social changes, which are transformed at the political level into a matter of human rights.
Disability in the 1980s
The WHO (World Health Organization), in the 80s, conceptualized disability as the result of damage to health that gave rise to a deficiency, that is, a disability and, in turn, a handicap. A long process of revising the CDDM (Classification of Deficiency, Disability, and Handicap) gave rise to the ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health). This overview encompasses the positive and negative aspects of human functioning.
The ICF tells us that the deficiencies do not have a causal relationship with the etiology nor with its way of developing. This modified the restricted biomedical-linear understanding (cause-effect) that indicates that disability only manifests as a product of a physical, sensory or mental deficiency.
In this context, disability is conceptualized as a generic term that includes deficiencies in bodily functions and structures, limitations on activities, and restrictions on participation, indicating the negative aspects of an individual’s interaction (with a health condition) and their contextual factors.
The integration of these models allows the integration of the different dimensions of human functioning, allowing to obtain a coherent and comprehensive vision of the different dimensions of health with a biological, individual and social perspective: Biopsychosocial Approach.
At present, disability is seen from an ecological perspective (person-environment integration).
Currently, the WHO defines a person with a disability as an individual with diminished physical or mental integrity, either permanently or temporarily, by birth or due to a disease or an incident, compromising their independence or ability to perform a job or attend an educational institute.
Disability Statistics Worldwide
It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people are living with disabilities worldwide since many are hesitant to disclose it or do not consider their conditions as disabilities.
However, according to WHO, the world has more than 1 billion people with disabilities currently, 20% of whom survive with significant functional disabilities. The field of disability on a global scale in a few figures:
- Around 253 million people, 3.2 % of the world’s population, have some form of visual impairment. Of this figure, 36 million have blindness.
- Around 466 million people, i.e., 6% of the world’s population, have disabling hearing loss.
- The number of people who need a wheelchair daily is 5 million, i.e., 1% of the world’s population.
- Around 200 million people, 2.6% of the world’s population, have intellectual disabilities.
Although these figures keep changing, one thing is sure: the number of people with disabilities, all ages combined, represents a significant portion of the world population.
It is essential to add that some people have multiple disabilities, for example, an individual who is both blind and deaf. This explains why the total number of people with disabilities per disability type differs from the number of people living with disabilities worldwide.
Whatever the form of disability, individuals who live with it experience the following as compared to those without disabilities:
- lower achievements in education
- inadequate health outcomes
- higher rate of poverty
- less economic participation
And what causes these negative outcomes? The answer is barriers to the participation of people with disabilities!
Disabilities in the US
According to the CDC, Centre for Disease Control, 61 million adults, which means one in four adults, have some form of disability in the US, with the highest percentage in the South.
Below is a list of the most common forms of disabilities in the US with the highest to lowest percentages:
- mobility disabilities (12.2 percent of the adults)
- cognitive disabilities (13.9 percent of the adults)
- independent living disabilities (6.8 percent of the adults)
- deaf or hearing disabilities (6.2 percent of the adults)
- vision disabilities (5.5 percent of the adults)
- Self-care disabilities (3.6 percent of the adults)
The demographic and age factors of people living with disabilities in the US are varied. Its prevalence is most strongly associated with aging, followed by race and gender. Older adults, minorities, and women have more disabilities:
- two in five 65-year-old adults have a disability
- two in five people belonging to a minority group live with a disability
- one in four women has a disability
According to Statista, the highest percentages of people with disabilities are generally found in states such as West Virginia (19.5 percent) Mississippi (18 percent), Kentucky (18.1percent), and Arkansas (18 percent). Although the report does not indicate the causes that lead to these differences by state, these states typically have the highest rates of chronic diseases associated with disabilities, with:
- 4 percent of people with disabilities with a heart disease
- 6 percent of people with disabilities with diabetes
- 5 percent of people with disabilities have obesity
- 9 percent of people with disabilities smoke
Impact of Inaccessible Materials on People with Disabilities
Whatever the form of disability, permanent or situational (caused by a disease or an incident), non-accessible materials affect all. Access barriers affect every individual with a disability and point toward the social model of disabilities indicating how society stigmatizes people with disabilities and designs materials without considering the wide range of disabilities and impairments, limiting their access to information.
The term accessibility is defined as access to any information in digital form regardless of the means of access, content, and mode of consultation. This definition refers to the main function of the digital tools that must be made accessible, in this case, the provision of information.
This emphasizes the need for due diligence to be carried out when setting up a website. Thus, accessibility is the set of principles and techniques that must be respected when designing, building, maintaining, and updating websites and mobile applications to make them more accessible.
The concept of disability is widely apprehended. It refers to all disabilities likely to affect access to the web, particularly concerning visual, auditory, physical, speech, and neurological disabilities.
Indeed, when a person has such a disability, they encounter difficulties in using certain everyday devices, particularly the Internet. Given the importance of digital technology in everyone’s professional and everyday lives, the fight against exclusion involves apprehending people with disabilities.
Information barriers prevent people with disabilities from receiving or easily understanding the available information. Some examples include:
- Too small characters that an individual with a visual impairment can’t read
- Videos without subtitles are not accessible to people with hearing loss.
- Designing emails and other forms of electronic communication not accessible to people using screen readers
- Not including graphs, tables, or images, i.e., not using alt text descriptions with textual descriptions making the material inaccessible to people with disabilities
- Written material with unclear or complicated language without symbols or images challenging to be perceived by people with disabilities
- Overcrowded or confusing billboards
- Non-inclusive promotional and communication material
- Not including people with disabilities in the promotional messages, excluding them from the potential target audiences, etc.
These are some of the examples of information and technological barriers that exclude a significant population from accessing information and participating in daily activities.
Information Inclusion: from State Support to a Cultural Change
There is a lack of community participation with commitment and coordinated public policies between the different State agencies, universities and local communities.
Just as accessibility is an optional subject, it happens with many programming courses, in which one should contemplate web accessibility from the beginning. The solution is to start with it being mandatory.
Although the law requires access to the State’s web, there is still much to be done in legal matters: rules and regulations are needed to regulate the market and hardware devices.
As for hardware, the economic gap also has an impact. In any disability, the most expensive thing is the material access to the hardware. While screen readers are typical in cell phones, computers and tablets. A braille display device (a piece of hardware that converts text on a screen into braille) starts at $1500.
A computer cost $500. A blind person pays an additional $1000’s at minimum to access this device.
Articulation and Diffusion of Inclusion Technologies
There is a lack of communication between three pillars:
- Engineers and industrial designers
- Users
- Professionals from other disciplines, such as education, health, work, and culture
And within this framework, the first one, that of those who develop inclusive technologies, works in a disjointed way. It is necessary to form networks. A person with a disability who needs a specific device or application does not have a network that brings together all the initiatives or options.
The challenge is to articulate the initiatives of public universities and transfer them to the public, and these developments must always be kept close to people with disabilities. The Blind Muse Foundation is working with local chambers of commerce to assist in educating our small business communities on the significance of digital accessibility.
Many Inclusion Initiatives and a Challenge for Everyone
There is a pending task for different actors for technology inclusion: the State, the universities, and the technology designers. But also, the society, and us, as citizens.
Besides developing accessible websites, there should be initiatives to raise awareness. For example, starting an accessible educational platform for the dissemination and learning of content on disability, accessibility, and inclusive technology that aims to achieve the full inclusion of people with disabilities in our society.
Imagine what would happen if many people knew about assistive technologies and free software. Think about the most appropriate resources, not because they are occupational therapists or something like that, but because technology must be approached to democratize knowledge so that you can help another person and that other person can help another.
Thus, from Innovate to Include, we can take many steps. Teaching, for example, to configure the keyboard for people who lack fine motor skills. A neighbor can configure a screen with high contrast or larger buttons for the other with a visual disability. In other words, put a grain of sand to include those close to us.
This must be incorporated into the daily agenda to transcend the circles of disability. Each of us can be part of an accessibility chain. Thus, if we all talk about inclusion and generate real actions, we can generate the network we need.
The Blind Muse Foundation is dedicated to communicating, educating and connecting communities on the significance of making digital expressions accessible to all. If you or your organization would like more information on how to create accessible digital content, please complete the form below.
Thank you in advance for your participation in supporting our educational platform. The Blind Muse Foundation is a registered 501c3 non profit.
